Veronica Rothenhausler has long been a dreamer. But it doesn’t take much investigating to understand why that is.

She grew up for much of her youth in Las Vegas, a city of dreamers. An only child, she was constantly sizing herself up against an all-male cousin corps, which forced her to think big as an athlete.

Her mother, Carol-Lyn Liddle, is a Las Vegas vocalist who has worked with various groups as a performer in the city, mostly on classic rock tunes. That’s quite the female role model.

“I mean, she sings in a rock band; how many moms do you know who do that?” Rothenhausler told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “She’s awesome. She’s a badass.”

But it’s hard to argue now that Rothenhausler isn’t the biggest badass in her family. After a pair of 5-second amateur knockouts that have garnered her plenty of attention in the MMA world, Rothenhausler makes her professional debut against Katalina Malungahu (2-1) in a featherweight bout at Invicta FC 4 on Saturday in Kansas City, Kan. It’s one of 13 available as an online pay-per-view ($7.95, 7 p.m. ET).

In making her pro debut, Rothenhausler will meet a childhood dream of becoming a professional athlete, even though many told her that wasn’t possible. She was a three-sport athlete in high school and then a college athlete in two of them, but it was the experience of knocking out a sparring partner’s mouthpiece on her first night of combat-sports training that hooked her into becoming a fighter.

Always a strong, powerful athlete, Rothenhausler started so fast in her MMA career that the referee in her first amateur fight asked her to stop hitting her opponent so hard. She feels she has finally found the perfect sport for her sturdy build, which has helped her produce some memorable results already.

“Women just aren’t built like I am,” said Rothenhausler, who walks around at about 160 pounds. “I always lifted weights and was strong and powerful. It’s like I was made to do this. This is what I’m supposed to do.”

Always a performer

A child of Las Vegas, Rothenhausler was participating in T-ball and basketball by the time she was 4 years old. She was a natural athlete, which would make sports part of her life from then on.

She also had inherited some performing skills from her mother. Voted Vegas’ best live-rock performer in 2011 by Vegas Rocks Magazine, Liddle has made a career as an impersonator and performer.

With a mother in an unusual occupation, Rothenhausler wouldn’t be the usual little girl.

“I didn’t grow up playing with Barbies, and [my mother] was fully accepting of that,” Rothenhausler said. “She just let me be whatever I wanted to be.”

That was an athlete. Rothenhausler was aided by constant interaction with her male cousins, who did not take it easy on her in backyard games.

It was something she believes has helped her now.

“I was the baby, so I would get beat up,” she said. “It was probably the best thing that could’ve happened for me.”

In high school, she played volleyball, basketball and softball, and she moved on to Lassen Community College in California to play volleyball and softball. By the time she attended the University of Nevada-Reno, her sports career was mostly finished, but she didn’t want to stop competing.

A friend who was a wrestler suggested that she attend some training classes with him at a local gym. She hadn’t done that type of training before, but she thought it could be a good experience for someone with her body type.

The first night Rothenhausler went to the gym with her wrestler friend, she unexpectedly ended up in a jiu-jitsu class.

The gym was a full-service MMA training center, and Rothenhausler tried to learn as much as she could about the ground game, which was new to her. Later in the night, the class put on gloves to try some striking.

“I knocked the guy’s mouthpiece out of his mouth,” she said. “I said, ‘Do you mean to tell me there’s a place I can come to hit people?’ I went back the next night and the night after that. Every muscle hurt, I was bruised, and I had a black eye. But I fell in love with it.”

After about three months, Rothenhausler took her first amateur fight, in September 2011.

“She was like 175 (pounds), and I was around 170,” she said. “It was kind of rough. She was a mom and had her two kids come up to me and say, ‘This is the girl mommy’s gonna be fighting’

“It was a TKO. It’s funny, (the referee) actually said to me, ‘Hey, you need to stop hitting her as hard as you are.’ I remember thinking, ‘Is it like this in every fight?'”

It has been for Rothenhausler. In her next two amateur fights, she scored first-round, 5-second knockouts to put her on the MMA map. She since has moved to Sacramento to live with a boyfriend and found a gym in that area, which she hopes will prepare her to continue making a splash as a professional.

But even heading into the fight, the 23-year-old Rothenhausler has already become a curiosity in the MMA world for her past two knockouts.

“That’s how I fight, with power, with strength, and I’ve got hands,” she said. “Those are just the examples of what I can do.”

Award-winning newspaper reporter Kyle Nagel pens “Fight Path” each week. The column focuses on the circumstances that led fighters to a profession in MMA. Know a fighter with an interesting story? Email us at news [at] mmajunkie.com.

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